


Missing Scenes From A Scandal In Belgravia - "Mixed Signals" - The Rescuing Of Irene Adler

by akajustmerry



Series: Missing Scenes From A Scandal In Belgravia [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, Multi, POV Irene Adler, POV Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 03:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4813472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akajustmerry/pseuds/akajustmerry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What were the events before and after that tiny whisper, "When I say run, RUN!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing Scenes From A Scandal In Belgravia - "Mixed Signals" - The Rescuing Of Irene Adler

Sherlock wasn’t even sure if he had heard a single word John had said when he had returned to Baker Street that evening. The only sound he had heard since he’d left Irene Adler in Mycroft’s office was his heart pounding against his ear drums.  The knot in his stomach tightened.

“Wait, so you worked out the passcode, then? What was it?”  John had asked. Sherlock could feel his heartbeat in every nerve of his body. He blinked,  _I AM SHERLOCKED_  burning on the backs of his eyelids. 

“Just a bunch of random numbers.” He managed, finally. “I’m going to bed.” Sherlock didn’t even wait for John’s response before he headed to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Three hours passed. Sherlock had tossed and tuned until he accepted that sleep would almost certainly allude him. He sat up. Observing his pulse at screamed through his veins.  _You’d think I was high,_ he thought, almost dismally as he ran his hands down his face.

 _Though drugs, unfortunately, cannot be credited with this particular brand of instability, Mr Holmes._ A familiar voice whispered somewhere in the back of his mind. He sat bolt upright, “No.” He whispered, “Not you. Not again.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, before tossing his sheets aside and reaching down for his dressing gown on the floor.

Sherlock froze.

 _Of course she hadn’t been wearing his dressing gown when she’d entered the plane. She must have got changed before she left,_ he thought lamely as he scooped up his grey blue dressing gown. As he held it, he could’ve sworn he could smell a hint of his own shampoo on it. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Obviously Miss Alder had used it to wash her own hair when she’d had a shower before he and John had interrogated her.

 _“I’m thinking of a word starting with S, Mr Holmes.”_  The voice in his mind teased. Sherlock shook his head. Scowling, he threw on the dressing gown, doing his best to ignore the tingling sensation on his skin, as he headed out of his room.

The clock on the microwave read 5:02am when he flung himself down into his chair. His violin, which was till resting on the arm of it, was cool against his cheek as he picked it up and placed it on his shoulder. He picked the bow up off the floor too, poising it ready and took a breath. Then, began to play.

It wasn’t a song for her. He would never, could never, allow or admit to that of himself. But as his fingers pressed the strings, he knew it was about her. The Woman, and the last 6 months where he’d felt so consumed by her game. Their game. It was over now and she, for all that she had played for, all the lies and all the tricks, had lost. She had lost. But as Sherlock guided his bow slowly up and down his violin, allowing it to sail across the strings, he didn’t feel like he’d won.

Sherlock stopped playing.

Irene Adler was curled up in John’s chair. Sherlock immediately knew she wasn’t real. The dressing gown that hung loosely around her shoulders was the one he was wearing at that very moment. Yet, she sat there as she had done not hours before and smiled at him. The grey predawn light that poured in from Baker Street’s widows, made the waves of dark hair shine as she opened her mouth to speak,

“Sounds beautiful.” Her voice was low, “For something unfinished.”

“It is finished.” He muttered, pulling the violin away from his face and staring pointedly at the ceiling. Her chuckle rattled around his skull.

“Obviously.” She said. Sherlock looked at her now and felt the knot in his stomach tighten once more.

“Why are you here?”

“You tell me.” Sherlock didn’t respond to this, but absently slid his bow through his curls. Irene continued, “After all, you were the one that said it.” 

“Said what?” She was suddenly crouching in front of him, their faces inches apart as exactly as they had been barely 8 hours ago. But this time, when she placed her hand atop his, he couldn’t feel her pulse beneath his fingers. But that didn’t stop him from leaning toward her. If she had been real, his curls would’ve brushed her forehead.

“Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side.” Her jeer was barely a whisper but it was enough to shock him into consciousness.

Sherlock sat upright on the sofa of 221b, jerking so violently awake that John started, looking at him wild-eyed over the top of today’s paper. He made a point to focus on slowing his breathing, avoiding John’s eyes as he got up and walked over to his computer to check his email inbox.

“It’s been two months.” John’s voice was edged with caution, “Where do you think she is?” Sherlock stared pointedly at his laptop.

“Who?” He tried to sound casual.

“Irene Adler.” John’s cautious tone had a hint of incredulity, “You were muttering in your sleep.”

“Was I?” said Sherlock vaguely as he perused his emails.

“Yeah. You know, if you ever want to talk about it-” John trailed off.

“I have absolutely no desire to discuss women- Let alone the Woman- with you, John.”

“Right. Of course you don’t.” John sounded irritable now. “I’m going out, you gonna be okay?” John closed his paper as he waited for answer, he sighed, “Never mind, see you later.” John got up, grabbed his coat and shut the door behind him as he left. But Sherlock had barely heard him. His knuckles had gone white as he balled them into fists. Squeezing them so tight, he was sure the warm moisture he could feel trickling down his palm, was not sweat.

In the 6 months Sherlock had had the Woman’s phone, he had not managed to crack it. After he found out she was alive on New Year’s, however, he had managed to place a tracker in it. A tracker that emailed him the phone, and therefore the Woman’s, location every 12 hours. A tracker his brother had not removed when he returned the phone to her.

Sherlock felt his heart drop into his stomach when he read the latest location.

It was the same as the 4 before it. She had never stayed in a place for longer than a day, she was too smart for that.  _Why hadn’t she moved?_  Sherlock unclenched his fists, the knot in his stomach tightening as he recognized the coordinates as the location of a base of the local branch of a major Pakistani terrorist cell in Karachi. This particular terrorist cell, Sherlock knew, favoured days of torture followed by a beheading.

Sherlock stood up, grabbing his coat, he was out the door in seconds, hailing a cab in minutes. Within 40 minutes he was at Heathrow. Within 2 hours he was boarding the plane.

Moriarty wanted to burn the heart out of him and Sherlock had no doubt that he would. But he could not stand the idea of Irene Adler dying for that.

Sherlock’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out.

_Where are you? – JW_

_Out buying milk – SH_

Sherlock turned off the phone as the engines of the plane roared.

Moriarty had never intended for the Woman to get what she wanted. Some part of Sherlock knew she had just been fuel for the flame that would ‘burn him’. But she would not burn with him. The destruction of his heart was not worth dying for. It was not worth anyone’s life but his. Maybe Miss Adler was prepared to die for it. But he would not be allowing it. He had no intention to grieve for her again. Not after he condemned her. Not after last time.

This was one part of his heart Moriarty’s fire would not touch. 

 

***

As gunshots and gruffly spoken Urdu assaulted her ear drums, Irene Adler couldn’t help but think how appropriate it was that she would have to hand her phone to her executioner. Mr. Holmes had said it was her heart. How fitting it was that her last act would be to surrender it to the person who would stop it from beating.

 _Although,_ she allowed herself the thought as she hit send and the executioner took it from her just as a second executioner approached, cutlass poised,  _she’d surrendered her heart long before this moment. In fact, that was why she was here._ She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath with her final text to him imprinted on the backs of her eyes-

Before the sound of her own voice snapped them open and she turned her head to look up into the all too familiar green eyes of her executioner and felt her heart slam into her ribs,

“When I say run,  _run!_ ”

Momentarily paralysed, she sat there for a moment. Unsure whether what was happening was real or whether she was having some kind of post death hallucination. Around her, the gunshot fire increased and she could hear the slashing sound of Sherlock’s cutlass as it sliced through the air. The adrenaline kick in.

She stood up quickly, too quickly, wincing as pain shot through her right leg. Inconveniently reminding her of the uncreative torture she’d had to endure prior to her execution.  She swore out loud, looking around for Sherlock.

“I told you to run!” He yelled as she spotted him running towards her, a serenade of bullets flying past him. One narrowly missing his ear.

“They broke my knee.” She managed as he reached her. Though the cloth covered all but his eyes, Irene was sure she saw something like anger flicker behind them. She heard a bullet fly past her head. Sherlock moved quickly, taking her arm with his hand and placing it around his shoulders, gripping her waist with the other as he swapped his cutlass for a gun,

“Lean on me. I’ll take your weight, move as quickly as you can! Green van, 300 meters ahead of us, that’s where we’re headed. Let’s move!” He looked away from her, shooting a thug to his right as he half carried her away from the ever increasing amount of shooting adversaries advancing on them. Irene looked around, there seemed to be a lot of abandoned cars around, collections of half empty oil cans lay strewn about in the space between them and their assailants-

“Do you have a lighter?!” She shouted over the torrent of gunshots.

“Yes, why?!”

“Give it to me!” Sherlock reached into the folds of his robes and pulled out the lighter. Slipping it into her hand, he looked to where she had been looking and Irene saw his eyes widen before he turned them around and aimed his gun at the barrels,

“Hope you’ve got a good throwing arm!” He shouted before shooting at the barrels, black oil seeping out of them as Irene lit and locked the lighter and raised her arm,

“Get ready to run- now!” Irene hurled the lighter towards the barrels. Sherlock wheeled them both around, Irene heard him shout something and felt him move his body behind hers as the roar of the explosion consumed any other sound. The heat from the explosion engulfing the air around them.

“IRENE!”

She barely registered his use of her first name before the flying debris collided with her skull. At the same time, she became aware of warm fluid on her neck. What seemed to follow was an incoherent series of sounds and senses.

Sherlock shouting as the ground disappeared beneath her.

The pain in her knee. New pain, in her shoulder.

Her feet weren’t on the ground but she was still moving. Then, she wasn’t.

Another voice, not Sherlock’s. She was sitting now. Sherlock’s hands had moved from her back to her face.

The car’s engine roared. His shouts were so distant. So desperate.

 His green eyes swum in and out of focus. Then, there was nothing.

***

Her body took it’s time joining her mind in consciousness as her senses crawled back into action. The beeping sound near her left shoulder and the unmistakable itch of bandages on her skin confirmed she was in a hospital before she even opened her eyes to meet his. Standing, almost at attention, by her bedside. She couldn’t stop the smile curling her lips.

“Where are we?” Her voice might have been sandpaper in her throat.

“Safe. For now.” He replied, cautiously, “Do you remember who I am?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, "Are you my long lost father?" She croaked sarcastically. Sherlock looked alarmed, but Irene cleared her throat, chuckling, “I don’t have amnesia, Mr. Holmes.” Her voice was skeptical as she watched the tension leave his shoulders, “Though, I might be, because the Sherlock Holmes I recall condemned me to death.” She paused, watching him bite his lip, “Yet, here we are.”

“Mixed signals, I’ll grant you that.” He managed a cheeky smile as he looked at her, “I got your text, by the way.” His voice was dripped with sarcasm.

She scowled at him, “I was wondering,” she mused, “Seems it must’ve come off too needy.”

He chuckled at her, “Try not to thank me.”

“For what?” She teased. She watched his eyes dart towards her bandaged knee,

“Broken in four places.” He muttered, distractedly.

Irene rolled her eyes, shrugging, “I’ve charged people to do worse.” He blinked at her, biting his lip as he held her gaze for a moment. 

Sherlock shifted his weight on the balls of his feet. He hadn’t looked away from her at all, “Do you mind?” Irene frowned at the question for a moment before she realized,

“Please.”

Sherlock moved to perch himself cautiously at the edge of her bed. She had always thought it was oddly beautiful of him how, despite the manic nature of his mind, he could be so still. She adjusted herself to an upright position. Seeing the flinch of Sherlock’s fingers from the corner of her eye as she grimaced from the evident lack of morphine.  

“This is all very- what’s the word I’m looking for?” Irene made sure her voice sounded deadly, “Sentimental of you, Mr. Holmes.” Sherlock said nothing, “I thought we were just playing a game?”

Sherlock sighed, “Then, I suppose,” he said, his voice was low as Irene felt his fingers find hers at her side, “That this is just loosing.” The beeping rhythm of her heart monitor increased wildly as heat danced beneath he cheeks. Sherlock smiled at her and she couldn’t help returning it before she closed the distance between their lips.

It wasn’t a passionate kiss, at least, not to begin with. He was so still, so calm. But then, as slowly as the realization of the reality of the game, they both claimed to have lost, the kiss deepened. She felt his hand leave hers and it wasn’t until they had begun to gently pull themselves away from one another that she realized his hand had been clutching her cheek. Distantly, it seemed, she could hear her heart monitor going haywire. Irene whispered into his lips,

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes”

“My pleasure, Miss Adler.” He breathed back. He held her gaze for a long moment, their foreheads almost touching. She felt his curls tickling her head,

“You should get going, Dr Watson will be worried sick.” She teased.

“Nah.” he said, “He thinks I’m out buying milk.”

She chuckled, “Does it usually take you this long to buy milk?”

“I text him I might be a bit late. I got caught up with an old personal case.”

“Just a tad.” She let her eyes slide over him, drinking him in one final time before she spoke the next words, “You better get home, Mr. Holmes.” He blinked at her, “I have previous experience being dead, as you know.” Something flickered in Sherlock’s eyes, “I can take it from here.” He stared at her a moment more before removing his hand from her cheek, grabbing his coat and pulling it on,

“One last thing, this time, promise me you’ll  _stay_   dead. I’d rather not come home to find you napping in my bed.”

“I don’t like making promises under false pretenses. You do still owe me dinner.” She drawled, the corners of Sherlock’s mouth twitched upwards, though he quickly turned it into a scowl, “Goodbye, Mr. Holmes” she finished. He leaned down over her,

He gave a forehead the lightest of pecks with his lips, “Goodbye, Miss Adler.” 

**Author's Note:**

> A question I got asked after I finished writing TPoR was whether Irene and Sherlock's kiss in that fic was their first, I hope this answers your question hehehe. Originally this was two prompts published on my tumblr, but I always saw them as one fic. Hope you enjoyed! I'll be uploading all my other fics from tumblr and some extra things here over the next while.  
> ALSO, I changed the name of this series because I realized most of what I wanted to upload were missing scenes from the ep xo
> 
> Original Prompts:  
> http://letzplaymurder.tumblr.com/post/93106863762/adlock-prompt-request-the-first-time-irene-shows  
> http://letzplaymurder.tumblr.com/post/85519406372/hi-i-love-your-headcanony-prompts-like-the-one


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